Yeah, my joy from games comes in figuring things out, not in recognizing and applying something I picked up elsewhere. Now, you can keep figuring things out even in very deep games, but it requires ongoing study and effort and meanwhile you'll be losing to people who've memorized a whole bunch and aren't (against you, at least) having to figure out anything new at all—rather than do all that, I just play a different game when things get to that point :-)

I play games to feel "clever", not to feel "smart" (for values of smart like "ah ha, I happen to have read and memorized a counter to this opening that you don't know, so now I will crush you"), and continuing to feel clever with a deep game requires more commitment than I care to give to them, personally.

... this is probably a holdover from painfully-typical bad attitudes developed during a "gifted" childhood. It took me a very long time to stop seeing—if only subconsciously—studying as something adjacent to cheating, like "yeah you got an A but you had to study, so, that hardly counts". Looks very dumb written down like that, but it was the rut my brain got stuck in for a long while without my even realizing it. However, in the specific case of games, I haven't bothered to try to work past it, because I'm still having a good time with my approach, and I really do not want to get serious enough about any game that studying & focused, non-play practice becomes necessary to keep getting "I did a clever thing" dopamine hits.

Weirdly, this "preparation is akin to cheating, and at the very least a sign that you have already failed" attitude didn't transfer over into sports, where I was totally fine with (and loved, actually) practice and drilling.

> Thus, I love reading strategy guides, and following instructions. I build Lego sets frequently, but I never build My Own Creations.

Oddly enough, though, that's me too. I had lots of Legos as a kid but rarely built my own thing, usually building from instructions, and then if I did anything else it was typically combining, re-theming, or adding on to, instruction-built sets.

>Interesting. I feel similarly, but I would place my joy in exploration rather than discovery. I'm not interested in discovery, where I take only the rules/components and try to discover the best plays and strategies. I don't have the time or the inclination to endure the dead ends and plays of failed strategies. (Some people love that, they want to find the best plays themselves; not me.) I want a map, a guide, then my joy is in taking that map, and applying it to the game state I'm in.

I feel this really depends on who you are playing with. If everyone is new, I don't mind exploring the strategies. You can learn something and still get a good game. If one person knows the game fairly well, it's sometimes good to play half a game with open hands (if there is secret info) while the one person teaches and gives hints. It's definitely no fun if one person knows a lot of the game and trounces everyone.